Le vieil incendie

by Elisa Shua Dusapin

Après quinze ans d’éloignement, Agathe, scénariste à New York, retrouve Véra, sa cadette aphasique, dans la bâtisse du Périgord où elles ont grandi. Elles ont neuf jours pour la vider. Les pierres des murs anciens serviront à restaurer le pigeonnier voisin, ravagé par un incendie vieux d’un siècle.Véra a changé, Agathe découvre une femme qui cuisine avec agilité, a pris soin de leur père jusqu’à son décès, et rétorque à sa sœur « Humour SVP » grâce à son smartphone dont elle lui tend l’écran.C’est dans une campagne minérale qu’Elisa Shua Dusapin installe son quatrième roman, peut-être le plus personnel à ce jour. À travers un regard précis et sans peur, empreint de douceur, elle confronte la violence des sentiments entre deux sœurs que le silence a séparées.

Genres: Fiction, France, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Family, Audiobook

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2023

About the author

Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France in 1992 and raised in Paris, Seoul and Switzerland. Winter in Sokcho (Hiver à Sokcho) is her first novel. Published in 2016 to wide acclaim, it was awarded the Prix Robert Walser and the Prix Régine Desforges and has been translated into six languages.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I didn’t know how to inhabit the space between us.”

There’s something about The Old Fire that feels like standing very still in a quiet room, waiting for something to shift… and realising the shift is happening inside you, not around you.

I’ve adored Winter in Sokcho and The Pachinko Parlour, so going into this, I already knew to expect something quiet, restrained, and deeply introspective and she delivers that same delicate atmosphere here.

Elisa Shua Dusapin writes with this almost unnerving restraint. Nothing is over explained, nothing is forced, and yet every small interaction feels loaded with meaning. It’s the kind of story where silence says more than dialogue, and distance says more than connection.

We follow a narrator who feels slightly untethered, observing more than participating, and there’s this constant sense of emotional dislocation. Relationships hover in that ambiguous space, intimate, but never fully understood. I found myself leaning in, trying to read between every line, every pause.

It’s not a plot heavy book. If you’re looking for momentum or big reveals, this probably won’t give you that. But if you love stories that explore the quiet complexities of human connection, miscommunication, longing, the things left unsaid, this absolutely delivers.

There’s also a subtle melancholy that lingers throughout, like a memory you can’t quite place. It never overwhelms, but it stays with you.

This won’t be for everyone, and I can already hear people saying “nothing happened”… but honestly, everything happened. Just in the smallest, most human ways.

A slow, delicate, quietly haunting read that sits with you long after you’ve turned the final page.

I Highly Recommend.

Thank you Scribe Publications for my early readers copy.

Available Now!

[Maxwell]

Each of Dusapin’s novels thus far translated into English (excellently done by Aneesa Abbas Higgins) have been set in different countries: South Korea, Japan, Russia. Now we turn to France, Dusapin’s birthplace and childhood home.

We follow Agathe, a 30 year old screenwriter returning to her own childhood home to help her younger sister, Vera, prepare it for demolition. The home is not up to code, and the sisters, after the death of their father and with an absent mother, can’t afford to meet the standard of living. So it is to be taken apart, with stones from the old place being repurposed in a nearby pigeonnier (dovecote) that, over a century ago, was damaged in a fire.

Not long after their mother walked out on the family, Vera stopped speaking. Whether it was caused by a sudden brain issue or out of Vera’s choice, Agatha–along with her father and doctors–does not know. They can only communicate through text and the written word, which on top of their nearly fifteen year estrangement leaves them with an unstable relationship.

The act of clearing out the home resurfaces memories for Agatha, as she also deals with a personal crisis following her from her now home in NYC and the boyfriend, Irvin, she’s left behind there for the nine days it will take the sisters to complete the task.

Dusapin beautifully renders the quiet intensity of family dynamics, the pain of revisiting the past, and the bittersweet nature of closing out a significant chapter of one’s life. She asks what we owe one another, especially those we share the closest of bonds with: family. As with many of her novels, Dusapin considers communication, and how what we say and how we say it plays a critical role in the functioning of a particular dynamic. Vera is silent; Agathe, though verbal, leaves much unsaid. She doesn’t, much of the time, even to know herself particularly well, or is simply learning to comprehend so much she’s put aside for the last decade and a half. The subtlety in the book is in what’s not said.

Readers who enjoy quiet, contemplative and character-driven stories will find much to love in Dusapin’s writing. A provocative yet subdued narrative that evokes the French countryside, a mythic landscape, and a tragically beautiful tale of sisterhood.

[Ayo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin

Intimate. Plotless. Bloodless

I want to read books that make me jump for joy.
I also want books that submerge me in the dread of everyday life - the relationships we delay repairing, the estrangements we postpone confronting, and what happens in the moment when we finally collide. I want to be held under for a day or two in those waters -breathless, suffocating, reaching for air- and then, on the third day, released, gasping for what I didn’t realize I needed.

I want books that choke me and leave me comfortably uneasy. Slow deaths that give me earned life back with patience deposited.

That was my experience reading The Old Fire. I had no idea what I was walking into.

The novel reads like dark, biographical poetry. It begins simply: two estranged sisters return to their childhood home in the French countryside after their father’s death to clear out the house. That’s it. And yet, everything is already there - an undertow in disguise.

The book stays with the elder sister, Agathe, orbiting the younger sister, Véra, who is bound by aphasia. This is Agathe’s recollection - it’s intimate, inward, diary-like, almost pleading to be trusted. Her thoughts pulse through the pages, setting the rhythm of the novel. From the start, there’s an unmistakable sense that something died long before the father did, before the story began.

We begin in muddied emotion. The book is nearly plotless. We don’t know what is happening - only that something is wrong. If this were a film, it would possess that quiet, creeping horror: nothing overtly frightening, yet a constant sense of dread in the air. And then, toward the end, suddenly the light breaks through. When it does, it’s breathtaking and beautiful.

I loved The Old Fire for its tenderness, compactness and interiority. It does something few books have done for me - what exactly does the war of reconciliation look like internally? What do the push and pulls feel like emotionally? How do we come across to others in that moment? It feels deeply personal, almost confessional - biographical poetry in prose form. When Dusapin finally lets the light in towards the later parts, it reminded me of the quiet, luminous poetic grace of Han Kang’s The White Book.

“I tell her that mountains are formed here - where we are standing. They take eons to come into existence and grow so big, it takes unimaginable strength for them to rise up and reach for the sky. The oldest mountains are the ones that have broken through the earth’s surface to tower above the people who live at their feet.”

There’s also something in the book’s present-tense awareness - the narrator’s acute attentiveness to each moment - that recalls Katie Kitamura’s Audition:

“People’s names are displayed as they speak. Letitia’s the most frequent. I’ve always liked the name Letitia - it’s soft and sharp at the same time. I hate my name Agathe. It makes me think of an old lady with pointe glasses. Bitter. It sounds dry. “

And the despondent emotional atmosphere -the rawness and emotional undercurrents brought to mind Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment:

“You are my sister. You’re not my friend.”

The Old Fire is Dusapin’s alchemy in action: she takes the mundane act of clearing out a dead parent’s château and spins it into a dense, aching chest of emotional gold.

“My father would have us believe that nothing was reflected in the blackness of the pond, not even the stars. I know, of course, that he was making it up. All bodies of water cast reflections of the universe when light shines on them.”


My heart longs for more books this tender, raw, and personal.

Maybe Agathe lives next door.

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness.

For about the first one-third, I tremendously admired the way that author Elisa Shua Dusapin-- translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins -- says so much in so few words. With a phrase, even a single word, she quickly makes it clear that the narrator, Agathe, is estranged from her younger sister, Vera, as well as from her long-time partner (or husband) Irvin. Agathe and Vera's father and a baby figure into these estrangements.
Vera literally doesn't speak--and we know that before it's outright stated.
Is there an unspoken romantic bond with the sexy neighbor, Octave?
Masterfully, the author weaves in memories that help explain.

But after a while, I longed for more. More Dostoevsky, less Hemingway.

(Before I go further, here's the basic set-up: Agathe--after fleeing to the US 15 years earlier, as a teen--returns to the family's crumbling homestead in the French countryside to help Vera clean out that house. Their father had died a couple of years ago, and new owners are taking over the property. This is the first time the sisters have seen each other since Agathe's flight; she didn't even show up for their father's funeral.)

Not that I wanted Dusapin to explain explain explain and beat the obvious into my brain. Not at all!
But I wanted to see and feel Agathe's emotional reactions. For instance, at one point, after a particularly honest exchange--Vera communicates through body language, facial expression, and texts-- it seems as if Vera has decided to cut Agathe off completely.
Next chapter: Agathe is working at her computer. Vera takes a shower. The wind howls.
How did Agathe feel about Vera's accusatory texts? Angry? Scared? Relieved? Determined to do...whatever?

At 175 pages, this novel is too short.

[Donna Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elisa Shua Dusapin is the author of The Old Fire. My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

The promotional materials describe this brief work of literary fiction as the author’s “most personal and moving novel yet.” If that is truly the case, I don’t think I want to read her earlier work. It’s not a terrible novel necessarily, but given the hype, I am a little surprised. Someone else praised it as “subtle,” and I can vouch for its subtlety; but for me, it is a story in which I keep waiting for something to happen, and in the end, I’m still waiting.

In broad contours, it is a story in which our protagonist, Agathe, must return to the tiny hamlet in France in which she was raised following the death of her father. Her sister Vera is still there, but they haven’t seen one another in a long time. Her mother is alive, but the parents split up when she and Vera were children, and they don’t see her. She and Vera must deal with the estate, hence the title.

As Agathe returns to the house where she was raised, there are all sorts of issues hovering in the background. She is pregnant, deciding what to do about it; her sister Vera, who is mute due to some physical but unexplained cause, resents her for moving to New York when they were both still fairly young; Agathe has a partner back in New York that wants a commitment, but she holds him at arm’s length. She used to have a crush on a neighbor in their French village; does she still?

As the book ends, none of these things is addressed much. Agathe and Vera sort through their father’s effects and make decisions, not always agreeing; there’s a great deal of inner monologue; and when Agathe leaves to return to New York, nothing much has changed or been decided about anything. And I am left with questions and more questions. What’s with Vera’s mutism? Why don’t they and their mother talk? Agathe comes to France, and not even a phone call…? What does Agathe even think of the man back in New York that’s waiting for her?

I’m inclined to recommend this book to insomniacs as a sure cure, but it’s probably not that simple. I note that it was a huge hit in France, and has been translated into dozens of languages, yet most English-speaking readers seem as underwhelmed as I am, and so I have a hunch that my lack of enthusiasm may be cultural. But I can only report my own impressions, and my impressions say that this book is a snooze fest.

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

My third Elisa Shua Dusapin and the third time three stars. A 30 year old screenwriter returns to her parent’s home in rural France and her mute sister. Grief pervades this short novel
If I weren’t your sister, would you be friends with me?

The main character of The Old Fire has a sister who doesn’t talk. She is also processing a pregnancy that didn’t came to fruition. Her father just died and her mother was absent.
Quite a lot going on, which makes it seem like a week in a village that has just 33 residents, and is only still in existence due to a Hermés atelier in the vicinity, could be quite a good idea.

However the narrator soon finds out that the past never left this place.
A sudden meeting with a wild boar, objects of their youth (including ice skates and crayons that her father used in cave expedition) and unease with virtual co-workers and absent partner form the backdrop to this still novel about grief. The Lost in Translation vibes are strong as she thinks of things being said to her for the first time in French, as she left as a teenager. The relationship with her sister is tense and there are powerful, beautiful scenes that illustrate this dynamic.

Still I found the book rather meandering and even now, on the same day, can hardly recall the end and the actual pay-off that the author was aiming for. Somehow it left me a bit cold honestly due to the level of introspection (exacerbated by the sister not speaking), even though the author is definitely strong in conjuring atmosphere.

Quotes:
You're my sister, not my friend.

I wasn’t strong enough to stay

I am beginning to wonder if the problem is with me, if it is all in my head.

[Cindy Landes · Rating 3 out of 5]

J’aimais l’ambiance très étrange, le climat de tension entre les deux sœurs.

Il y a de nombreux mystères, plusieurs zones floues. J’étais donc très intriguée, j’avais hâte d’arriver à la fin pour combler tous les trous!

Mais ça l’air que c’était pas le but, on reste dans le flou total. Heureusement que c’était très court, j’aurais été plus que frustrée si ça avait été une brique et de finir ainsi.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Old Fire is a novella by award-winning French author, Elisa Shua Dusapin. It is translated from French by award-winning translator, Aneesa Abbas Higgins. After fifteen years away from the French village where she was raised, thirty-year-old Agathe returns to help her younger sister, Véra to clear the house of possessions before it is demolished.

Of course, seeing her sister, who hasn’t spoken since she was six, for the first time since their father’s funeral, and being back in the now-much-reduced village, dredges up memories, both sweet and sour, quite a few of which Agathe would rather forget. She encounters their neighbour, Octave, about whom vague hints might lead the reader to conclude he was Agathe’s teenage crush.

There are a few mentions of Irvin, the man Agathe has been with for eight years, but just how strongly she feels, or doesn’t, about him, the father of the baby in a pregnancy that didn’t reach full term, never quite comes through. Unclear, too, are quite what happened to their mother, and what precipitated the sisters’ estrangement. Dusapin’s protagonist is not easy to connect with.

As she uses a first-person narrative, everything, each little incident, be it from her childhood, or the present day, is from her perspective, and the reader can only wonder how reliable a narrator she is. She even says “Something is still bothering me. That memory, has Véra forgotten it? Did I make it up? I can see it so vividly, as clear as day. But if I have to carry the memory alone, I’d rather forget it.”

This is a story in which not much happens, which is fine if Anne Tyler or Elizabeth Strout are writing: no one writes the small moments of everyday lives better. But perhaps something is lost in the translation, because this is sadly not the case here. By the end of 165 pages, there are still questions, and not a lot of resolution. A promising premise that doesn’t quite deliver.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Scribe Publications.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
I need to talk about this more, just getting round to updating as I haven't opened goodreads in a hot minute. I am just always enamoured with Dusapin's writing and her quiet examination of complex relationships. maybe not the full five stars I have given her other works as I just wasn't as connected to the voice in this book. Still incredible and Dusapin has such a distinct tone to her writing that I know I will always eat up

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Dusapin's short novels there is always a young woman travelling alone and then having to integrate in an existing group of people in some far-flung destination.

It creates a strong sense of alienation and 'lost in translation' atmosphere, especially when the novels are set in Asia. It brings mystery too, because there are only indirect references to the past and we don't know if we can trust the people or what their secrets are.

This latest 'The Old Fire' is set in the Dordogne in France. The travelling woman has lived in the US for many years and returns to her childhood home because her father has died. She and her sister, with whom she had lost contact, empty their father's house together.

Why has there been no contact between the sisters? Why does her sister not talk? What does the title Old Fire refer to?

Dusapin is certainly not going to give the answers, but there are sparse hints for the reader to ponder.

It's intriguing and well-written, there are interesting references to the work of George Perec that makes me want to finally read him. But I also felt like Dusapin is writing very similar novels...

[charlie medusa]

c'est-à-dire que je n'ai rien à dire (mais alors vraiment rien)

[jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…it was always to protect you. I wasn’t strong enough to stay. That’s why I’m incapable of talking to you. I’m going to leave again, and I need to know that you don’t hate me. You have no idea how much I love you.”

honestly i don’t have much to say about this other than that i liked it! “the old fire” follows a woman named agathe returning from the united states to her hometown in france to clear out her childhood home after the passing of her father. there, she reunites with her sister, véra, who has been nonverbal since their youth. together, the two of them revisit old memories and resurface the past. there’s love, hate, loss, and the exploration of navigating those emotions.

this was extremely plotless, like the epitome of no plot, just vibes—and i loved it. there was a really distinct atmosphere throughout the book, cold and contemplative and soft. despite being told from agathe’s point of view, it’s clear that each sister is distinct and deeply complex, and i loved seeing that fleshed out through their interactions and their tumultuous relationship. the prose is very sparse and subtle, and the reader isn’t given a ton, but i found it quietly haunting.

“the old fire” ultimately grapples with a lot of multi-layered questions. what do we do when we love someone but don’t really know them? how much of ourselves can be expressed through language, and how do we confront a lack of it? and can we ever truly leave anything behind?

thank you to simon and schuster for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was never able to let go of the suspicion that Véra had intentionally denied me access to her inner world.

The Old Fire is Aneesa Abbas Higgins's translation of Le vieil incendie (2023) by Elisa Shua Dusapin, and the fourth by the translator/author after Winter in Sokcho, The Pachinko Parlour and Vladivostok Circus.

The novel is set over 9 November days. The narrator, Agathe, now thirty, has returned to the family home, in the forest in the Périgord region fo France, from the US. Agathe has lived in the US for 15 years, where she works as a screenwriter, currently adapting George Perec's W, or the Memory of Childhood (in its translated title) for a 6 part TV series.

Agathe's father died 5 years ago, her mother having walked out, and moved to England, when Agathe was 9.

Now Agathe and her younger sister, Véra (two years below her in school, and 2-3 years younger) need to clear out the house, which has been sold.

But, crucially to the sister's interaction, Véra has had aphasia for over twenty year, since the age of 6, relying entirely on non-verbal communication, for reasons which her doctors don't fully understand, initially struggling at school because of this, although she is quick to indicate, when Agathe tells her about her new commission, that she has read Perec.

I can't really remember how her silence began. Véra was six. We were eating, my father, Véra and I. My father asked her a question and she didn't reply. We thought it must be a tantrum of sorts. My mother wasn't there, she was working. My father grew impatient. Véra started breathing hard, her face contorted. Strange sounds came out of her mouth, somewhere between groaning and gurgling. Choking. She never uttered another word after that. I don't know what it feels like to her, but I do know that since I had the epidural, I've understood how frightening it can be to have the impression you can't breathe.
[...]
I was fifteen when I left for the US. Véra was twelve.
I went there for high school and lived with a host family.
Véra had stopped speaking long before I left. I knew that she managed to keep up at school most of the time but I'd assumed her reading hadn't progressed beyond a basic level. I certainly didn’t think she’d be up to reading Perec.

The beautifully sketched novel intimately explores the sisters' relationship, their communication confined to non-verbal gestures and phone messages, and Agathe's own situation, with elements including:

- the key role of non-verbal communication, a topic Dusapin has said fascinates her;

- the sororial relationnship between Agathe and Véra, with a strong, yet infrequent bond (contact between them while their father was alive was largely indirectly via him) and, in one pivotal scene, a mutual and honest acknowledgement that were they not related, they would in no way be friends. And yet their relationship provides an important form of connection in their respective lives;

[Dusapin has said in interviews “Je n’ai pas envie de croire à une solitude ontologique : je cherche à faire se rencontrer mes personnages” - “I don’t want to believe in ontological loneliness: I try to bring my characters together.”]

- Agathe's own stunted communication - more comfortable in the medium of fictional screenplay than of direct discussion, and also her realisation that Véra and before that her father, are the only people who message her in her native French;

- Agathe's troubled relationship with her partner in the US, including the loss of a pregnancy;

- the role of the owner of a nearby rundown chateau, Octave, a few years older than the sisters, and a long-standing friend of the family (and who, it feels, Agathe is waiting, hoping, will make a move);

- the forest itself largely taken over by hunters, who regard her as an intruder, despite her being born in the family home;

- subtle echoes of Perec's novel;

- Agathe's relationship with her mother and father - the reason for her leaving for the US aged 15 not directly acknowledged.

I'd like to know what it's doing to her, leaving this house. I thought I'd said goodbye to it fifteen years ago. I feel like going back downstairs, bringing all the things piled up outside back into the house, gathering up the dust from the charcoal pencils. I want the walls to go on crumbling behind the posters, the cage to rust away around the cheese, the house to smell to high heaven for ever. I want to know what my sister dreams of, if she too has visions of our father sleeping, his neck frail, the vein pulsing beneath his withered flesh. The breath flowing from his nostrils as if he is at peace. His body that seems to say: your father is no longer there, he is somewhere else, he lives in memory. I want to shout at him to wake up, I want to yell out his name, I want to say to my father: Stay. Stay here. But let me go.

Véra can't answer me in the dark, and I've had enough of the back and forth on our screens.

A core theme of Dusapin's novels have been character, like herself, with different cultural and linguistic routes. Here the sister can communicate in their native French, but Véra's aphasia presents a different barrier. Although Dusapin has suggested in interviews that this was a late addition to the novel, and one, that in some respects, allowed a different, clearer, form of communion:

“Chez mes personnages, la langue n’est pas le vecteur de la communication la plus authentique ... en ôtant la parole à Véra, la petite sœur, j’aurais plus de facilité à faire communiquer les deux protagonistes”

“For my characters, language is not the channel of the most authentic communication ... by taking speech away from Véra, the younger sister, I would have more ease in making the two protagonists communicate.”

Impressive - Winter in Sokcho remains my favourite of the novels, for its Korean setting and also the surprise of its uniquely delicate nature, but this is close.

[ritareadthat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agathe returns home to assist her sister Vera in cleaning out their childhood home after their father's death. The book is short and read quickly, I finished it in a few hours. The start is a little slow, but as it builds, the author imbues the story with a slight element of intrigue and mystery, hinting that there is more here than meets the eye. Feelings are conflicted between the sisters, as they have been estranged for years. Will they discover a way to communicate again, setting their differences aside, in a last attempt at reconciliation? Time will tell.

The setting and feel here had me reminiscing about a number of books with similar vibes - We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I Capture the Castle, The Safekeep and Blue Sisters. if you enjoyed any of these books you will most likely appreciate The Old Fire.

While I enjoyed it overall, and there were many notable passages that I highlighted, I felt there was a connection that was lacking. There was a touch of a clinical coldness to some of the writing and details at points that turned me off. Agathe is also a bit of an unreliable/unlikeable narrator in that I feel I can't trust some of the things she thinks/feels about her sister. While this was initially a tad repulsive, I am sure it is what the author intended. In the synopsis at the start of the ebook ARC, this was compared to Katie Kitamura or Elena Ferrante, and while I have not yet read Ferrante, I have read Audition by Kitamura and I can see a hint of that here in the narrator.

Overall I would recommend it if you are looking for something short and quick that does have some notable passages and if you have interest in sibling alienation/estrangement stories.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Told with protective detachment and vagueness because this is what happens and this is how we turn out when we're spawned from rubble.

You think someday there will be understanding and catharsis. You read about it and you write about it - decades pass and it doesn't come. One day you read a book like this late into the night and realize the old you would have burned and hurt and raged, but this time all you did was go to bed. You're tired. It's too late to try and put out these old fires.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few years after the death of their parents two sisters are reunited to empty the family home. Agathe is a screenwriter from New York. She was just 15 when she left France to move to the USA permanently. Véra is her younger sister. She has not spoken since she was a young child, and communicates by writing messages on her phone.

This isn’t a plot driven novel, rather one that gradually reveals the character of the two sisters and their backgrounds. Dusapin is wonderful at creating atmosphere. This is an elegant and intricate novel, but far from being as strong as Dusapin’s other translated work.

[annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

spare, elegant, and ultimately a bit withholding, like pretty much all of elisa shua dusapin's work. none of her books have been all-time favorites of mine, but i've liked them all and i'll continue to pick them up. i find her prose very smooth and graceful and her descriptions of the natural world and her works' sense of atmosphere in generally to be beautifully wrought. i enjoyed the moments of tension and connection between agathe and véra and wish there were more of those and that their relationship was explored in more depth. but still quite well-done overall!

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s something meditative about Elisa Shua Dusapin’s books and The Old Fire is no exception.

When script writer Agathe and her estranged mute sister Vera find out that they have a week to clear out their dead father’s house in rural France, they meet up.

Although there is no bad blood between the two siblings, through a lack of understanding each other communication in both literal and figurative ways had never been the sisters strong point. In a way Agathe sees this house purging as a way to understand what cut her off from Vera.

As the siblings are going through the house’s ephemera, Agathe remembers what caused all those rifts many years ago.

The Old Flame is a tender and heartfelt book, which in its quiet demeanor packs an emotional wallop. HIGHLY recommended and one of the best books I read this year.

[Yahaira]

Thanks to Summit Books for the gifted copy

The Old Fire is classic Dusapin as the most significant events occur in the white space of the page. It is a novel of profound withholding, where the plot doesn't move through action, but through the steady, radiating tension of what is left unsaid.

We follow Agathe, a film scriptwriter, as she returns to her childhood home in France to help her sister, Vera, empty it. The house has been sitting in a state of arrested decay for five years since their father’s death. The irony of Agathe’s job isn’t lost on me. Her career is dedicated to dialogue, yet she returns to a home where words have no currency, where she finds herself functionally illiterate in the language of her own family. She left at fifteen, leaving behind a twelve-year-old sister who was already mute, who only communicates through handwritten notes or text messages. Returning fifteen years later, Agathe is a stranger to the very history she belongs to. She is an expatriate not just geographically, but emotionally.

Dusapin’s prose (beautifully translated by Higgins) is vivid, atmospheric, and delicate. Frustratingly, the unease in each scene has a peculiar habit of evaporating or dissolving rather than resolving. Conflicts over their mother’s abandonment, the years of silence, or the reasons behind Agathe’s own desertion of Vera never reach a boiling point. Instead, the tension simply turns to vapor, leaving the reader with the same unanswered questions from the beginning of the book. Annoyingly true to life, we never find out the reason for Vera’s mutism, Agathe’s sudden departure, or what happens with her secret tragedy.

Dusapin’s restraint is either going to move you or irritate you. It is a book that can feel empty and cold like the stone house the sisters are emptying. It can also be quietly tragic and moving in how it asks if we can ever go home again. For Agathe, the answer is a quiet, devastating no. This doesn’t quite reach the melancholy I felt when reading Winter in Sokcho, but it’s a return to form after the underwhelming Vladivostok Circus.

Something I wish I could go deeper into is the connection to Perec's work. As Agathe helps Vera empty the house, she continues to work on a script based on Georges Perec’s W, or the Memory of Childhood, a book I haven’t read. After some googling I see that Perec used a fictional story to circle the "void" of his own lost childhood and his mother's disappearance in the Holocaust. Similarly, Agathe and Vera are circling a void: a mother who left them to start a new family elsewhere, and a father whose death has left them with a house to dismantle but no shared language to process it. Now I feel like I need to read Perec to see the deeper meanings, is Dusapin saying something about controlling reality into something manageable, but the tensions between the sisters resist this? I feel like I’m missing a key piece of the puzzle.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin was a steely realistic fiction that felt emotional and gritty. The family was wrought with struggles and certain limitations that had me thinking for days. How do we feel about our sisters? What family drama shaped our relationships?
It’s a short read with a feeling of powerfully uncomfortable truths. The author did a great job expressing the deep emotions that follow us when we leave our family. I gave this a high 4⭐️.
Thanks, S&S/Summit Books via NetGalley.

[Mélanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elisa Shua Dusapin crée une atmosphère, suggérée par petites touches, au cœur de l'intimité de ces deux sœurs. Avant même que l'on ne s'en rende compte, nous voilà au centre, des pensées, des questionnements, des doutes, des moments où l'on change d'avis, où l'on se trompe, consciemment ou non. Neuf jours pour balayer deux vies, voilà le défi.

[Gigi · Rating 2 out of 5]

The kind of literary fiction novel one writes if they’ve written four literary fiction novels by the time they’re thirty. Just vague enough to mask its lack of insight. Trite and breathlessly earnest in its melodramatic capital-L literary seriousness almost to the point of camp, and in not quite reaching that point arrives at very little else.

[Kremena Koleva · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ох, ами, има и такива хора! Случват се всякакви неща в семействата и като правило децата поемат цялата гама на отношенията и ден след ден са свидетели на сбъркани приоритети, грешни избори и опити за измъкване от взетите решения. Всяко дете реагира по различен начин и после става възрастен, който носи следи и , дори да не е съзнателно, прави други объркани избори. Гори мостове уж за да гради свои основи... Тц, не става с примерите на родителите, с отношението на родителите и с липсата на съпричастност от родителите! Онази вечна тема, която често ми се набива в очите в литературата и в живота - да си родител е жизнено важна роля, защото носиш отговорност не само за собственото си съществуване, а можеш да оплескаш бъдещето на всяко невинно дете около теб!
До тук добре. Но стилът на авторката абсолютно не ме спечели. Напротив, не изпитвам желание да си го причиня друг път! Не ми беше минало през ума, че си купувам билет за сценарий на Фелини, когато отварях книгата. Съдбата беше разделила двете сестри и следващата им среща ги събира като непознати странни жени.

[haslerroberson · Rating 2 out of 5]

While overall this book left a lot to be desired, I do think it had a couple quite compelling and tender moments. At its core, this story centers around two estranged sisters who have reunited after fifteen years and are working together to empty out their decrepit childhood home ahead of demolition. There are many aspects of their familial relationships that the reader is never made privy to, and it’s these same secrets that seem to have caused their family to fall into disrepair, just like their house. There were so many hints about past events and other secrets that I assumed we would get at least a couple belated resolutions for, but no dice. There were parts of the story where I thought I suspected a haunted house, almost psychological vibe, and others hinted at more of a somber romantic tone, but neither of these hunches proved fruitful. I found the writing to be eerie yet eloquent but the story left me dissatisfied.

[nina.reads.books · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Old Fire is my first book by author Elisa Shua Dusapin (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins), but it definitely won’t be my last.

The book is about two sisters who are brought back together after fifteen years apart to empty out their childhood home in the French countryside ready for it to be knocked down and the stone repurposed to fix up a neighbouring property. Agathe lives in New York and has not seen her sister Vera during their time apart. Their mother left them when they were children and their father died recently. Vera stopped speaking when she was six years old. Sorting through a lifetime of belongings in their childhood home leads to a dredging up of memories and family resentments.

The Old Fire is meditative and subtle. There were delicate sibling dynamics to contend with. Communication is difficult as Vera speaks only through messages, but it went beyond that. Fifteen years of collective resentment at Agathe leaving, at Vera not speaking, at their parents separately leaving them causes tensions between them. And yet they are still sisters.

This was a simple story told in beautiful prose. I also particularly liked the way all the old buildings and forest are such a clear part of the setting. For example:

“The building looks tired, the ivy-covered roof sagging above the brick-work, like a weary giant gasping for breath . . . Bracken forces its way between the cracks in the front steps.”

Just lovely!

In many ways not a lot happens in this book. Agathe as the narrator gives us a peek into her memories and her current relationship back in New York. Vera is almost a closed book to her. The neighbour Octave also features at times. What we see and experience is all about small moments of human connection, of memory, of the fallibility of family. I really enjoyed the quietness of it.

A book to savour in a single sitting if you can spare a chunk of time.

Thank you @scribepub for my #gifted copy

[Sam Cheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dusapin’s ability (trans. Higgins) to conjure Véra’s bodily communication with Agathe on the page while underscoring the alienated sisters’ personal troubles—that which is in itself not incommunicable—is memorable. Confined yet spacious, The Old Fire comes together as a novella. The Perec references make me wonder what other literary angles I’ve missed.

I rate The Old Fire 3.5 stars.

My thanks to S&S/Summit Books and NetGalley for an ARC.

[Karolína · Rating 3 out of 5]

meh

[Olivia Zerger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple but immersive and relatable

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

What a gorgeous gem of a book. I will be reading more by this author, for sure.

[Vivi Doleig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parmi les passages obligés que la vie nous contraint d’expérimenter, la mort d’un ou de ses parents n’est jamais anodine. Agathe et Véra, ces deux sœurs éloignées par les aléas du temps, se retrouvent pour trier, vider et tirer un trait définitif sur ce qui fut la maison familiale.

Ce duo de prime abord incompatible, ce pas à pas attendrissant initié par chacune pour retrouver une trace de ce lien fraternel d’autrefois ; c’est avec beaucoup de subtilité et d’intelligence émotionnelle que l’auteure décrit ces petites scènes du quotidien. Un quotidien de quelques jours seulement, qui pourrait solidifier les liens désunis des deux femmes ou au contraire, leur faire comprendre qu’il ne faut parfois pas forcer le destin.

Mais ce simple tri dans les affaires enfantines, n’est que le réceptacle du tri que Véra peut-être, et Agathe très exactement, doivent effectuer dans leur vie, dans leurs relations aux gens et à l’existence.

Certains souvenirs affleurent et tout n’apparaît pas aujourd’hui comme les sensations d’alors. Faut-il accepter les regrets ou tout assumer en se convainquant qu’il fallait qu’il en soit ainsi ?

Quand chacune croit avoir souffert plus que l’autre, lorsque chacune croit avoir raison et savoir ce qu’elles pensent l’une de l’autre, les malentendus, les quiproquos, les non-dits, les actes manqués, tout finit par faire sens.

Au-delà de la palette d’émotions parfois contradictoires ressenties tout au long du livre, on se sent lié à Agathe car on a l’impression qu’elle se confie comme elle écrirait à son journal intime. Ses sentiments, ses épreuves, ses diverses discordances, ses défauts, ses multiples maladresses… elle nous donne envie de rentrer au sein du livre pour lui prodiguer tous les conseils dont elle a besoin et toute l’attention qu’elle n’a pas su donner, la lui apporter.

Le seul gros bémol de ce livre intimiste réside très précisément dans quelques mots qui m’ont profondément choquée. L’auteure décrit le compagnon d’une des protagonistes, et précise qu’il la pénètre sexuellement alors qu’elle dort. Elle se réveille donc parce qu’elle a été pénétrée à son insu pendant qu’elle dormait. Je ne comprends pas comment on peut banaliser ce genre de comportement sans rien préciser, sans faire passer le message que ceci est un viol, et non pas une attitude acceptable et normale. Je suis abasourdie… Je vais avoir du mal à oublier cette partie pourtant si succincte du livre.

J’espère que l’auteure répondra à mon message, lui demandant une explication…

Je ne renonce pas pour autant à découvrir ses ouvrages précédents. Son talent est certain.